Google Trusted Stores Helps You Earn Buyer Confidence

Google has made it even easier for businesses to join Trusted Stores, a program designed to help merchants gain the trust of customers. Earlier this year the tech giant announced a set of improvements on the AdWords blog, which means you can now get the Google seal of approval, without any fuss.

Which is good news if you want to improve your conversion rate, because a confident buyer is a generous one – who hopefully keeps coming back for more.

What is Google Trusted Stores and why do I care?
We’re talking about buyer confidence here – a key influence on potential customers when they decide whether to do business with you or not. Over the years Google has consistently shown how a presence on Google+ My Business, rich snippets and the previous Authorship info increase conversion rates. Why? Well, for a number of reasons, but most of all because these little details make you look like the real deal.

Trusted Stores takes this a step further for online retailers and you may have seen this in action on PPC ads. Qualified stores now get a seller rating which gives them a score out of five stars and below your ad text will read “Shop with confidence – Google Trusted Stores”.

People trust Google, so you can imagine what this little snippet of text can do for your conversion rate. Let’s say you’re the only ad of three that pops up as a Google Trusted Store – who are users going to pick?

So what has changed about Trusted Stores?
Basically, Google has just made the process a whole lot simpler for businesses to jump on board. The search giant wants you to sign up because it knows more people will click your ads, which in turn makes them more valuable to Google (as well as yourself).

If you’re not certified as a Google Trusted Store yet, all you need to do is create an account and add two simple snippets of code to your website. Any mention of code might sound a little scary, but it’s much easier than the previous setup where businesses had to submit shipment and cancellation feeds.
You also now get to choose where your Trusted Stores badge appears on your website and it will show up on HTTPS pages.

Enhance your PPC ads with review extensions
If PPC is in your marketing strategy then you’ll also want to display your Trusted Store status in your ads, as we mentioned above. To do this, you just have to set up a review extension in AdWords and this will pull through all your reviews from Google+ (another reason to be on the platform).

This rating will also show up on Google Shopping and by the time you’re certified as a Google Trusted Store you should see an increase in traffic and conversions fairly quickly. This spike will calm as more businesses sign up to the system, but it gives you a chance to establish yourself as a reliable seller with new customers in the meantime – hopefully o